About

Having worked in-house within Chile’s financial sector for over 20 years, Isabel Margarita Cabello Silva is today one of the country’s leading lawyers as affirmed by her appointment to the position of general counsel by Chilean president Sebastian Piñera in September 2018. Her in-house career began in 1997 at insurer Aseguradora Magallanes, where she was tasked with creating the legal department at only 25 years of age before being promoted to general counsel three years later. She says that this gave her, ‘the first experience as a leader and strengthened me in this new role’. Cabello then joined BancoEstado in 2005 as senior counsel within the study and finance group of the legal department but after demonstrating her skills was promoted to take charge of the subdivision just two years later. In 2009 she was promoted to the head of the corporate group of BancoEstado’s legal department and appointed certifying officer by the Bank’s executive committee. At that time in her career, Cabello participated in the initiative of starting paperless processes using digitalisation. ‘Considering that this was 10 years ago it was quite innovative and visionary. I feel proud of being ahead of my time taking important environmental issues into account’, she highlights. Following the restructuring of the Bank’s legal department in March 2011, the corporate and finance areas merged into one single area, and Cabello was assigned leader of this new group. In 2013, she left BancoEstado to become general counsel of retail bank Banco Falabella. She shares the following about her time there: ‘I built a strong and successful team improving considerably the efficiency and professionalism of the legal department of the Bank. Additionally, the legal area was extremely well evaluated as a great place to work and our services were much appreciated by the other areas of the Bank. It was considered the best area for two years’. She also earned credit for participating in the beginning of an integration process between the Bank and a financial company under the same holding, as it involved the complexity of integrating two completely different entities with diverse cultures and ways of working. Despite re-joining BancoEstado less than one year ago, Cabello has already begun contributing effectively to the organisation beginning with several restructuring processes: ‘At first, it was fundamental to align and make the legal department work compatibly with the modernisation processes carried out in the Bank as a whole. Based on this, I established our challenges and goals both internally and externally. The internal changes involve culture, policy and a way of working. The external changes are very practical; we have moved from individual offices to open space office. This is already being carried out’. She is also commended for contributing to the prevention of credit card fraud across the entire country.